The Scribal Elite and the Repurposing of Myth for Cultic Use

In a discussion of early syncretisms in Lagaš, Selz admits that most of the sources revealing these identifications are probably just the “speculations of theologians.”43 He includes hymns, prayers, omen texts, and lexical god-lists among these sources and also mythological texts within this category. Even though many myths were based on ancient

42 _{See E. Reiner, “A Sumero-Akkadian Hymn of Nanȃ,” JNES 33 (1974): 221-236.} 43 _{Selz 1990, 111.}

oral traditions, these stories were restructured by temple scholars to reflect current cultic practice and are, therefore, of limited value for reconstructing the theology of the third- millennium Sumerian general population.44 Those texts that have been recovered and studied by modern scholars inform as much us about cultic realities as much as they do about Sumerian conceptions of the divine world.45 For this reason, Oppenheim suggests

44 _{One such example of an ancient myth that has been modified to reflect a newer cultic reality is the} Sumerian myth Inana’s Descent. As a folk story, Inana’s Descent relates the story of Inana’s trip to strip her sister Ereškigal of her rule over the netherworld, and in her travels she strips herself naked to gain access. Inana fails and is released only when Dumuzi and his sister Geštinanna are taken captive in her place, each spending half a year in the netherworld. On the story’s mythical level, according to T. Jacobsen, Inana’s travels to the netherworld and subsequent capture by Ereškigal, who hangs her up as a slab of meat, represents the fate of sheep: after the grass dies, they are shorn for their wool, and then they are butchered and left in cold storage (T. Jacobsen, TheHarpsthatOnce…SumerianPoetryinTranslation [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987b], 205). Likewise, the second half of the myth explains the seasonal effects on livestock and agriculture: Dumuzi’s reappearance from the netherworld each year represents the resurgence of sheep in the freshly grown grasslands in the spring, and Geštinanna’s reappearance in autumn represents the culmination of the grape harvest.

The myth also works on a third level, the cultic one. At the beginning of the story as Inana prepares to descend into the netherworld, she travels throughout the land of Sumer. First she goes to Uruk and forsakes her temple Eanna. Then she goes to Bad-Tibira to forsake her temple Emuškalamma; then to Zabalam and its temple Giguna; then Adab and Ešara; then Nippur and Ebaragdurgara; then Kiši and Hursag-kalamma; and finally Akkad and Eulmaš. These seven cities and their respective temples are the major Inana cult centers, moving northward from Uruk (W. Leemans, IshtarofLagabaandherDress [Studia ad tabulas cuneiformas collectas a F.M.Th. de Liagre Böhl pertinentia 1/1; Leiden: Brill, 1953], 32; Jacobsen 1987b, 207 n. 2), and her travels may reflect the goddess’s cult-statue making its ritual journey from her primary temple in Uruk to Akkad and beyond to the mountains, which represent the netherworld (S. Dalley 1998, 154; G. Buccellati, “The Descent of Inanna as a Ritual Journey to Kutha?” Syro-

Mesopotamian Studies 4 [1982]: 3-7). On this third level, her removing her garments, jewelry, and makeup no longer simply represents “not taking it with you” into death or the end of the shearing season; rather, the undressing and redressing now mimics the taking off and putting on of the cult-statue’s refineries for various cultic ceremonies. This cultic aspect of the myth is strengthened by V. Hurowitz’s note that the juxtaposition of the goddess’s death with a damaged statue found in Ninšubur’s plea to Enlil to save Inana from the netherworld:

O Father Enlil, let not your daughter be put to death in the Netherworld Let not your good metal be covered with dust of the Netherworld

Let not your good lapis lazuli be broken up in the stone of the stoneworker

Let not your boxwood be cut up into the wood of the woodworker…(V. Hurowitz 2003, 155, Hurowitz’s translation).

The parallel structure of these lines in Ninšubur’s plea indicates that Enlil’s daughter actually is the good metal that would be covered in the Netherworld. Should Enlil not act on her behalf, Inana becomes the broken lapis lazuli or the chopped boxwood. The oral tradition behind this text likely includes Ninšubur’s plea to Enlil and the other high gods since repetition is a hallmark of oral story telling, but the plea itself probably lacks references to these high quality materials. As a folk tale or myth, these lines would create graphic yet awkward metaphors describing Inana, but as a cultic text, the lines really call the statue of the goddess to mind.

45 _{A later myth Enūmaeliš readily lends itself to political, theological, or ritualistic interpretations and} origins rather than its being taken simply as an ancient folk tale. Politically, the tale validates Marduk’s assumption to the head of the pantheon and thereby validates the imperial ambitions of his earthly capital

that despite the allure of the Sumerian myths for Assyriologists, these texts should be left for the literary critic and passed over by the historian of religion.46

Having dismissed mythological texts as sources for insight into the religiosity of the general population, Oppenheim examines the value of prayers and rituals for this purpose.47 These two genres are always concomitant, often with the ritual described after the prayer, and to analyze one without the other unavoidably distorts what can be gleaned from either one. Unfortunately, these genres are also cult-centric. Oppenheim claims that these texts lack concern for the individual Mesopotamian in relation to the cult. They neglect existential issues an individual would encounter outside of a cultic context, including death, disease, misfortune, and his family. According to the prayers and rituals, the individual merely acts as onlooker of certain cultic celebrations that were designed specifically for the public.48 As a result of scholars’ reconstructing Mesopotamian religion according to the prayers and rituals, Oppenheim concludes:

An undue amount of attention has been given to the peripheral regions of the religious life – mainly to the priestly speculations concerned with the relationship between the several gods of the pantheon in terms of power, function,

achievement, and kinship.49

Babylon; theologically and cosmogonically, it explains how order, Marduk, overcame chaos, Tiāmat (N. Sarna, UnderstandingGenesis: TheWorldoftheBibleintheLightofHistory [New York: Schocken Books, 1966], 8). Ritually, its reading on the fourth day of the Akītu-festival accompanied the gathering of the gods’ statues in Marduk’s temple Esagil to decide the destinies for the coming year, reinforcing the cultic aspect behind the process of order overcoming chaos (M. Cohen, TheCulticCalendarsoftheAncient NearEast [Bethesda: CDL Press, 1993], 404).

46 _{Oppenheim 1977, 177.} 47 _{Oppenheim 1977, 175.} 48 _{Oppenheim 1977, 176.} 49 _{Oppenheim 1977, 180.}

As Oppenheim rightly states, scholarly investigation should separate popular religion from royal religion and from priestly religion. Only then can we attain “an unobstructed vista” of Mesopotamian religion(s).50

Without being able to consider mythological, ritual, and prayer texts as representative of the views of the general Mesopotamian population, our view into Mesopotamian religious thought is significantly limited. However, as already discussed, van der Meiroop notes that the vast majority of Mesopotamian scribes did not belong to the scholarly or elite scribal classes but worked for the public. The written material that these scribes (as distinct from the scholar-scribes) left behind does not necessarily reflect a cultic or elitist viewpoint since they were not associated with the temple or trained on the esoteric scholarly tablets. Presumably, they held the same conceptions of the divine world as their illiterate peers, which is to say that this class of scribes better represents the religiosity of the typical Mesopotamian than does the scholar class.